Thursday 12 May 2016

Thursday Tosh

Two sets of tosh for you. The first from Erica Buist's less-than-stellar Magnus Carlsen interview in yesterday's Guardian, a piece which for some reason took an early detour via our favourite freak show, informing us:


Good Lord, "resurgence". Good God, "Worldwide coverage". Actually the piece goes on to claim that the freak show
accumulated a live audience of over 35,000
the meaning of which is obscure to me and may for all I know be obscure to the writer too. If however it means that 35,000 people have been to watch the show since 2008, that's actually quite a poor return for eight years' worth of shows and "worldwide coverage", you'd have thought.

If it doesn't mean that, what does it mean? And where is the figure sourced from - or should I say, from whom?

Back in 2008 Chessbase was trying to tell us that
chessboxing is fast becoming a world-wide phenomenon, overtaking chess in the number of spectators it can attract.
Looks like it's still got some work to do, since the second of our tosh selections (via Christopher Kreuzer) features yet another contribution to the ever-lengthening list of ludicrous exaggerations of the number of chess players in the world.

This one is relatively modest by the standard of the genre


but I guess there's time to add another 100-105 million to the tally before the tournament starts next month.

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15 comments:

  1. Anonymous13 May 2016 at 16:10

    Here's some FIDE tosh:

    "FIDE is purchasing a new device, a very modern and a very sophisticated one, which actually identifies everything."

    Anti-Cheating head Israel Gelfer. I have no idea what he means.

    https://www.fide.com/component/content/article/1-fide-news/9609-interview-with-the-fide-vice-president-israel-gelfer.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous13 May 2016 at 16:10

    I must say that while reading that article I also groaned when I saw the mention of chess-boxing. Clutching at straws for content filler there.
    --theblueweasel

    ReplyDelete
  3. ejh13 May 2016 at 20:06

    "FIDE is purchasing a new device, a very modern and a very sophisticated one, which actually identifies everything."

    I also liked "sometimes during the game we will check the players". That'll go well.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Laar14 May 2016 at 05:41

    I like how "Regan" became "Professor Rigence"

    ReplyDelete
  5. Stanley Lee14 May 2016 at 09:26

    Don't they already check players during the game based on opponent's complaint? That's what happened in previous cases. Or maybe they have a heat gun like the cycling league to detect motors.
    But what are the odds that they "happen" to check the players who are critical of FIDE (like Nigel Short)? Just like the IRS has been weaponized, it's hard to think this will be used properly.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous18 May 2016 at 21:21

    "Despite the drop in chess coverage in mainstream media outlets, the sport has never been more popular. Over 600 million people worldwide play chess and hundreds of thousands of games are played online every day."

    http://www.agonlimited.com/news/2016/5/16/worldchesscom-to-offer-copyright-free-articles-to-boost-chess-coverage

    ReplyDelete
  7. Heath18 May 2016 at 21:35

    Interesting. "Our mandate (Agon) is to boost the popularity of chess around the world."
    Nowhere does that appear in the FIDE-Agon contract AFAIK, which is what I would take "mandate" to mean in the context. Or it could be the mandate from the Agon shareholders, namely Merenzon himself. But probably it's just pompous language that's really means that their *goal* is to boost the popularity of chess, and incidentally to make a profit off it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. ejh18 May 2016 at 22:59

    Hard to see how it could be boosted any further with 600 million people already playing.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous19 May 2016 at 04:10

    600 million people play hundreds of thousands of games every day. Given that I know people who play 100 games a day themselves, it wouldn't surprise me if that means that < 0.01% of "chess players" play chess per day (online). Probably not the next stat that YouGov will publish.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous21 May 2016 at 18:56

    Magnus Carlsen got over 2000 viewers in his fairly impromptu Facebook interview. According to Chess24, this large number is a testament to his popularity.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Laar21 May 2016 at 19:28

    Nigel Short was boxing as a promo for his rapid Norwegian event. Well, I guess I've seen chess used in other sports, as promos too.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Laar22 May 2016 at 15:06

    Here's something, Kirsan suddenly knows that only 200 million worldwide played chess in 1995 when he took office.

    http://rusnovosti.ru/posts/419573

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous26 May 2016 at 09:06

    Growth rate of 100 million per annum for the next 4 years, says Kirsan:

    "By 2020 it is planned to reach the number of one billion chess players..."

    https://www.fide.com/component/content/article/1-fide-news/9642-100-days-before-the-start-of-the-baku-chess-olympiad.html

    ReplyDelete
  14. Laar30 May 2016 at 11:58

    FIDE/Agon make a non-announcement announcement concerning the Grand Prix.
    https://www.fide.com/component/content/article/1-fide-news/9649-fide-grand-prix-2016-2017-announcement.html

    Still missing are:
    A) 9 nominees from the organiser AGON (to be announced)
    B) venues to be announced soon

    In fact (B) is so important it's repeated again: FIDE will soon publish the exact venues

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous4 June 2016 at 17:31

    In their ever on-the-ball editorship led by D. McClain, worldchess.com has under events:

    2016 - 2017 Grand Prix Cycle (First Leg) May 11-25 2016

    Strangely, no report on the results has been filed...

    But the page does exist!

    http://worldchess.com/events/europe/2016/05/11/2016---2017-grand-prix-cycle-%28first-leg%29/

    ReplyDelete

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